I’m one of the many unfortunates holding the bag, er, eBook, when stupid Gemstar decided to stop supporting it. It is one of the greatest inventions since sliced bread, especially for those with vision problems, but now we are left without any way of getting new books.
It was originally the RCA eBook until Gemstar, the British company that publishes TV Guide took it over. It was possible to buy books from a huge supply they had, or were available on Amazon.com and other sites and download them directly. Of course, they had a propritary system so other types could not be used on the device.
Any time I was reading this in a doctor’s office, an airport or in a store waiting for my wife to finish shopping, somebody always inquired what it was, and once saw the advantages, wanted to buy one. It still happens but have to reluctantly tell them it is no longer available. I’m sure millions more could have been sold, but Gemstar in their infinite corporate wisdom, never, ever advertised or promoted it, so it was relatively unknown except by word-of-mouth. Then they dropped it because “it did not sell well.” Duh!
I particularly love it because have a vision problem and can only read Large Print books, but with the eBook, one could download any font and type size from the PC and use that larger print for reading. it had enough memory so one could keep 8-10 books on it at any time.
Although their techies said it was not possible, fortunately I found a way to load plain text files into it (if anybody is interested, I’ll explain how), so can still get loads of the classics from Gutenberg’s site or from the Univ of PA that has thousands.
I was hoping that some smart company would take it over, but it seems doomed to disappear. Has anybody heard anything at all about it, or have any ideas of how some company or organization might be persuaded it take it over?
This wonderful device is going the way of the Osborne computer! 